Wednesday, 28 October 2015

Why the Thatcher / Corbyn Comparisons Are Bullshit: A Crash-Course History Lesson

“The
tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living." -

Karl
Marx, The 18th Brumaire of
Louis Bonaparte

If Marx’s
witty addendum to Hegel’s notion of the repetition of world-historical events –
“first as tragedy, then as farce” holds true, then just where exactly does
Jeremy Corbyn’s surprising ascension to the leadership of the Labour Party
place us on the Tragifarcial Historical Continuum? Elements of both have been
apparent – the tragic sense gained from a pessimism that can only come from an
overview of the history of left-wing party leaders in a capitalist economic
system (they always fail). The sense of farce comes from observing the reaction
to Corbyn’s win among the chattering classes (it ranges from condescending to
absurd). The dust has yet to settle, and in the smog many writers are left
scrambling for an illuminating historical analogy that can give us an
explanatory pathway towards understanding how history may yet again repeat
itself. As with most ephemeral political writing, the trick towards generating
an audience and, crucially, those all-important clicks is to say something
counter-intuitive that everyone instinctively knows is a load of old cobblers,
but to argue the point in a novel way that makes it look like you have
something interesting to say. It’s through this that we get the most popular
contrarian analogy of the past few months: Jeremy
Corbyn is Margaret Thatcher.

The argument
rests on two sacred cows of popular British political history; the
Great-Man-meets-Revenge-of-the-Nerds theory popularised in Hollywood
sensationalist garbage like the 2011 film The
Iron Lady that Margaret Thatcher was a lone political radical who transformed
the country via a whiplash-inducing shift from post-war consensus to free
market neoliberalism, a shift realised by the strength of the leader’s character
and clarity of her vision. The other, that Thatcher’s popularity with the
general public, rather than her party, was an enduring factor which led to her
electoral victories.

The Lady is Not For Turning (The Tide)

The first cow
to the slaughter is the notion that there ever really was such a thing as
consensus in British political discourse which Thatcher was able to “smash
through” on the strength of a bold new exotic ideology of neoliberalism
hitherto unknown to the British people. In reality, demand for less state
control of the economy existed in post-war political discourse at least since
1946 with the formation of the Housewives’ League and would be a prominent
(though by no means consensual) political solution to the increasingly costly
yet popular welfare state. Nevertheless, the character of state intervention in
the economy through public spending projects was something politically popular
and preserved in spirit through both political parties in the immediate
post-war period, but with strategic targeting of marginal groups designed to
get each party more votes.

It was ironically
a Labour Government which first broke with the notion of entirely state-managed
industry and transformed it into an electoral strategy. In 1963, the
then-Leader of the Opposition Harold Wilson proposed greater public-private
collaboration to forge a “new Britain” in the “white heat of technology” to
propel Britain to prosperity through scientific revolution. It was the Tories,
led by Sir Edward Heath who in the 1970 Selsdon Park conference later forged
the radical free-market ideology upon which the Conservatives won the 1970 election.
The manifesto was shortly abandoned, however, in the face of trade union
opposition. It was this victory of free-market ideology and subsequent U-Turn,
rather than a booming voice or skill with a cutting jibe, which formed the
basis for Thatcher’s ascent to the Premiership.

Heath’s U-Turn
in the face of union opposition led to the formation of the Selsdon Group in
1973, which acted as a political pressure faction based on the certitude that
Heath’s dramatic shift from a deregulatory right-wing agenda was a craven
capitulation to organised labour and a betrayal of what had been seen as an
endorsement of neoliberalism by the British public. Rumblings of the 1980s
Thatcherite rule could be felt in the first year of Heath’s leadership, with
tax cuts handed out for the wealthy and curtailments on union power realised
through the Industrial Relations Act 1971. By this point, Thatcher was in
Heath’s Cabinet as Minister for Education and eventually became known to the
public chiefly as the minister responsible for the withdrawal of free milk in
schools – “Thatcher, the milk snatcher”. The end of consensus and the
introduction of austerity and market reforms were felt during the subsequent Callaghan
Premiership, with the proclamation of the death of consensus in the 1976 Labour
conference and the introduction of widespread public sector reforms signalling
a cross-party move towards the free market. Even the Thatcherite casus belli of right-to-buy was first proposed by Labour in its 1959 election manifesto.

The comparison
with Corbyn which therefore states that Thatcher was a lone ideological zealot
despised by her parliamentary party, yet beloved by the public, is one that
fails to stand up to scrutiny. Whilst Thatcher was on the right of the Tory
party, she was a prominent figure in its leadership prior to her election
(though due to her gender relegated to a minor role in Cabinet), and the
policies she would introduce during her premiership were already beginning to
present themselves in embryonic form in previous administrations. By contrast,
Jeremy Corbyn has no real ideological base of support amongst his parliamentary
party and his economic policies, whilst certainly not extreme in a purely
academic sense (besides a dogged insistence on the viability of rent controls),
are outside the mainstream of policy forming circles which aim at profitability
over investment.

The Rise and Rise of Thatcher: A Convenient
Bullshit Tale

The second
sacred cow is the inevitability of Thatcher’s rise. The popular mythology is a
lazy sort of Whig history which treats the Thatcher’s seizure of the
premiership as an inevitable outcome based on the public’s faith in her radical
deregulatory platform. Whilst we can be sure that the declining rates of profit
in the 1970s would have made austerity, a growth in private debt and
free-market reforms inevitable, that Thatcher was necessarily the person to do
this, or that it was neoliberalism as endorsed wholeheartedly by the electorate
which led to her victories is questionable.

Pictured: A memorial service for an apparently popular politician.

Thatcher
herself was never personally popular as a politician. Whilst there was, and
still is, a section of the public and the Conservative Party who found her
uncompromising and dictatorial leadership style invigorating, to the majority
of the electorate (and, ultimately, her party) she was seen as an unlikeable
figure and difficult, if not impossible to work with. Whilst it is often said
that Thatcher, in contrast to Tony Blair, never used focus groups, the reality
is that she relied heavily on the PR firm Saatchi and Saatchi to reinforce her
personal image and, crucially before her premiership, the image that Labour was
mismanaging the economy – the famous “Labour isn’t Working” campaign. In terms
of positive ideological arguments, there was very little. The 1979 Conservative
Party manifesto on which she won her first election victory outlined the “five
tasks” of the Tory Party in Government:

(1) To restore the health of our
economic and social life, by controlling inflation and striking a fair balance
between the rights and duties of the trade union movement.

(2) To restore incentives so that hard
work pays, success is rewarded and genuine new jobs are created in an expanding
economy.

(3) To uphold Parliament and the rule
of law.

(4) To support family life, by helping
people to become home-owners, raising the standards of their children's
education, and concentrating welfare services on the effective support of the
old, the sick, the disabled and those who are in real need.

(5) To strengthen Britain's defences
and work with our allies to protect our interests in an increasingly
threatening world.

This is a fairly
bread-and-butter right-of-centre manifesto, as opposed to a battle standard for
an insurgent, union-busting far-right government. Though Thatcher would in
later interviews decry those who sought consensus and bridge-building as
idiotic wimps, the image sold to the electorate in 1979 was a vague promise to
restore greatness and fairly wooly pledges to curtail union power. Rising
inflation and unemployment, the winter of discontent and voter malaise with 15
years of a Labour Government made divisive, ideological rhetoric unnecessary –
the entire focus of the 1979 campaign was against Labour rather than for
Thatcher. Even after the 1979 election, Thatcher was less personally popular than James Callaghan, and her disastrous
handling of the economy in the years after the 1979 election saw her job
approval rating reach as low as 16%. It was only her victory in the Falklands
War (itself a consequence of her cuts to military spending) which revived her
popularity in time for the 1983 General Election.

"It was the pun 'wot won it!"

None of the
above suggests that a comparison between Thatcher and Corbyn, or between 1979
and 2015, is remotely relevant to enable us to envisage a path to victory for
Labour in 2020, at least in the way which is typically argued. It shows us that
the idea that Thatcher’s ascension provides a blueprint for an election victory
won on strong ideological grounds is false, since Thatcher’s 1979 victory was
by no means inevitable and was won by exploiting voter perceptions of the
Callaghan Government. Much of what Thatcher put forth in Government was just a
speeding-up of what would likely have happened anyway as a result of the
declining rate of profit, and would likely have been implemented in some way,
shape or form by a Labour administration, as well.

Labouring the Point

The argument
put forth by Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters is that Labour lost the election
in 2015 because it failed to provide a credible alternative to austerity. This
is an attractive argument to those of us on the left who oppose austerity, but
it is, unfortunately, false. Post-election polling shows that the three issues
on which the Conservatives won the election (and Labour lost) in 2015 were 1) economic
credibility, 2) immigration and 3) perceptions of party leaders.

The Tory
sleight-of-hand on the issue of economic credibility is fairly remarkable when
we consider that an economic crisis which was caused primarily by sub-prime
mortgage lending in the US was portrayed to voters as a result of reckless
Labour overspending. None of this supposed recklessness was opposed by the
Tories during their time in opposition, of course, but the public tendency to
view public spending as “too much of a good thing” resulting in economic crisis
is easily exploited, as are asinine comparisons between household and national
economies that necessitate austerity (which is not really about “living within
our means” so much as increasing corporate profitability). What then resulted
was a crisis caused by typical enemies of the left (speculative bankers, city
fatcats) being blamed on the left itself!

This is what a tabloid reader has been told a Corbyn rally looks like.

Nothing,
moreover, suggests that the public view Jeremy Corbyn as more Prime Ministerial
than his likely opponent (should he survive as leader) in 2015, George
Osbourne. The unique hostility from the press which he faces as party leader will
only increase – even natural allies such at The Guardian remain patronising and
dismissive of his leadership. The odd Owen Jones here or there is unlikely to
be enough to change public perception, particularly when Corbyn’s laudable
adherence to Republican principles can be sold to a jingoistic Middle England
as a rabid hatred of the Royal Family.

What we are
left with, then, is a leader with a commendable (though hardly extreme)
economic platform which shifts the focus from profitability, which has increased
in the past five years, to investment, which has not, and without any of the
necessary political infrastructure to implement it. When elected as Leader of
the Opposition, Margaret Thatcher had served as a minister, had in broad terms
the support of her party and exploited public perceptions of Labour
incompetence. Jeremy Corbyn, meanwhile, cannot command the loyalty of even his
Shadow Cabinet due to a long history of rebellion against the party, and absent
a disastrous economic crisis which can be pinned on the Tories, can very easily
be painted as a reckless, overspending socialist. As leftists, we can of course
be supportive of a genuine alternative to the austerian economic consensus, but
let’s not delude ourselves into thinking that success through Parliament is
likely, or that solace can be found in the mythologies of our enemies.